[TxMt] Some feature requests

[Frédérik Bilhaut]

Hi,

Congratulations for your TextMate software, I just switched to MacOS  
and I have to say that it seems to be very good. JEdit seems to be  
still ahead regarding features, but unfortunately it is almost  
unusable for me under MacOS because it is too slow. So I'm very  
interrested in TextMate, but it lacks several features I need.

Since it is payware, and because you may be interested in potential  
users' requests, here is what prevents me from purchasing TextMate  
for now :

- I use to write large documents in XML, and I use the soft wrapping  
feature. But unfortunately the indentation is not properly handled in  
this mode, since only the first "physical" line gets indented. You  
probably now JEdit does that very well, I may send a screenshot if  
you wish.

- I need some way to close XML tags automatically with the easyiest  
possible keystroke. For some reason, the shortcut for this feature  
does not work on my system (Tiger on iBook G4 and latest version of  
TextMate). Also, I think that the JEdit way to do this is very good :  
you just have to type "</" and the rest of the closing tag comes up  
automatically. For me this is far more natural than typing an  
arbitrary keystroke.

For me the lack of these two features above is a real show stopper.  
Also, I have some less important feature requests :

- It seems that it is not possible to use tabs without creating a  
project. It would be nice to have an option to say where newly open  
files should be opened (in a tab or a new window).

- I noticed that using the tabulation key when a block is selected  
does not increment the block but simply deletes it. I assume that  
there is another shortcut for this, but I think it would be much more  
convenient to be able to use the tab key as for a single line, as  
almost all good editors do.

- And of course, having the possibility to have a simple file browser  
without creating a project would be great. By the way, it also seems  
weird to me that the project explorer expands at the right of the  
main window and not at the left, which is quite unusual under MacOS  
and does not do well with window maximizing functions.

Thanks for your attention,

Best regards,
--
Frédérik Bilhaut
GREYC - Université de Caen
Campus II - Sciences 3 - Bureau 385
http://www.info.unicaen.fr/~fbilhaut